Hold your gaze

In a room full of women
who look like home,
watching their smiles as welcoming as mats,
I am reminded
that my type of beauty looks nothing like theirs.
Nothing silk soft like how they hold the gazes of men.
Habibi,
I have my mother’s eyes you know.
I imagine
there was nothing gentle about the first time my father saw my mother.
My mother’s gaze; a call for battle and no promise of win.
My father forgetting everything else for a while.
That moment like death taking his breath away
and
giving it back to him when she finally said hi.
A type of rebirth.

———————————————————-
For Ayomitans, reminding me that one is never too busy for words.

@bugganni, maybe for the first time ever, I actually find myself disagreeing vigorously with @TolaO. There is a sure, unifying theme- a woman speaking to her lover, Habibi, trying to distinguish her own not silk soft’ nor ‘gentle’ gaze (which she inherited from her mother) from that of the other welcomingly beautyful women in the room.

There is a simple, self-identfying theme about it; and I think my different opinion to @TolaO is an extension of the poem’s basic theme- there is no one definition of beauty, it is in the gaze of the beholder. I find effortless beauty here in this poem.

Thank you for the dedication. If there was a notch or two higher than how i esteemed you previously, with this, you’ve reached them. Well done, keep writing.